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Celebrate Christmas / Advent Season with Catholic Online

The Church has her own special liturgical year and calendar in which
she presents again the history and unchanging mysteries of our salvation,
from Creation to the Second Coming, together with the entire life
of the Savior. The mysteries do not change, but we do. A little older
and wiser, we have the opportunity to review and renew these mysteries.
When the familiar feasts come around we grasp something more about
them because we have lived another year and apply them more deeply
to our lives. This is a year of formation, like a school in which
we, like pupils, learn faith, hope and charity. We learn God's will
and to do God's will. Each Sunday and feast will present a special
lesson to us for our daily living.

Advent
is an especially lovely season and we can make great use of it.
With the beginning of the season of Advent, we begin a new liturgical
year. The First Sunday of Advent is therefore the Church's "New
Year's Day". In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Sunday begin
at sundown of the day before when the faithful celebrate First Vespers.
Advent begins the Christmas cycle.

Advent comes from the Latin word for an "arrival" or
a "coming". Advent means that the Lord is coming. Jesus
Christ, our brother in our humanity and our God in His divinity
is about to arrive. But He is comes to us in different ways. First,
Jesus came to us at a specific point in history at Bethlehem about
2000 years ago. But in the Church's great feast of Christmas He
mystically comes again. Second, the Lord, Alpha and Omega, will
come to judge the living and the dead in the Second Coming. Third,
the Redeemer comes to us in grace. He speaks to us in our consciences,
he comes to us in the Eucharist and in the Word of God proclaimed.
He arrives in the person of the begger, the needy, the suffering,
the oppressed. We must be ready to receive and welcome Him when
He comes, however He comes.

Advent is a time of joy tinged with penance. Joy, because we can
imagine nothing more sweet than the Christ Child and His Mother
Mary's bliss at His coming to light. Penance because we must strive
to be properly disposed to receive so great a gift of His presence.
In the millennial tradition of the Church, we faithful have done
penance before great feasts. Christmas and Easter each have their
penitential seasons in anticipation, Advent and Lent. The liturgical
color used in the Latin Church for the liturgy during both Advent
and Lent is purple, a sign of penance. In some places people may
see blue used, which is done without the Church's approval. The
Latin Church also emphasizes the penitential dimension of the season
by directing the use of sparse ornaments in church and by legislating
that instrumental music should not be used, except to sustain congregational
singing. This is a kind of liturgical fast, which makes the joy
and celebration of Christmas all that much more powerful by the
contrast of the lean and muted season of Advent. Advent is a time
of great joy, because we look forward to the beautiful feast of
the Nativity, but it is joy stitched through with somber and focused
spiritual preparation by doing penance.

More Advent & Christmas

The word Advent derives from the Latin word meaning coming. The Lord is coming. We may reflect that every year at this time we celebrate his coming , so that in a sense we can lose the feeling of expectancy and joyful anticipation, because at the end of the season, everything seems to return to pretty much the same routine. If that is the case, then our preparation may have been lacking ... continue reading

To become the mother of the Savior, Mary "was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role."132 The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as "full of grace". In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace... continue reading

The weeks of Advent remind us to set aside some of the hectic business of the holiday season, and to quietly reflect on the promise of the baby born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The Bible readings listed below relate to the Advent themes of waiting, preparation, light in the darkness, and the coming of the promised Messiah. continue reading

To all our readers

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you. Give Now >